


Bring Me Back To Life

by AgentVeronica



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Fix-It, Separations, they were ON a BREAK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8937808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentVeronica/pseuds/AgentVeronica
Summary: "If Captain Solo hadn't been gone for so long, this would never have happened. You love him in a way you'll never love anyone else; that's not ever going to change. And when he returns, this has to be forgotten, completely. Those are the boundaries, yes? I've already accepted them."





	

Leia lay unmoving for several moments after awakening. She kept her eyes closed and meditated instead on what she could feel and see: the warmth and weight of a male body lying beside her, a hand resting gently on her forearm, the sound of his slow, even breaths. Although she waited for guilt to seize her, to wring out the unfamiliar lightness inside, it did not.

Finally she opened her eyes. Ransolm Casterfo slept soundly for someone spending his first night in another person's bed. His curly hair looked darker than it really was, silhouetted against the white pillow. Leia still wore her long, loose nightgown, but he was naked. His clothes lay on the floor nearby, where she'd tossed them a few hours before. When she eased out of bed to tiptoe to the fresher, she stepped on what she suspected was his shirt.

In the fresher, she spent a long minute staring into the mirror. The defendant looked into the eyes of the judge.

_You're a married woman. You're still in love with your husband._

_Han left nearly two years ago. He hasn't even sent word in all that time, and if rumors are true, he's not spending all his evenings alone. This marriage is...on hold, at best._

_Ransolm hasn't been out of prison a month yet. He's still fragile. He shouldn't be pushed into something he might regret._

_He initiated the first kiss. He's the one who walked backward toward the bed. The one who—_

Leia sighed. She sounded like a four-year-old insisting the other kid started it.

All things considered, it would've been easier if this had happened in Ransolm's cabin. She could have sneaked out while he remained deep in slumber.

But _easier_ wasn't the same as _better_.

So she returned to her bed and slipped between the covers. Her motions tugged the blanket lower down Ransolm's side, exposing his lean waist, his still-too-distinct ribs. Normally the sheets were icy at night, but his body heat had changed that. Leia had forgotten how delicious a warm bed felt on a chilly transport ship so late in the evening.

She tried to move quietly—some conversations should be had in the light of day, or as close to it as a spaceship could provide—but Ransolm stirred. Just as she settled her head onto the pillow, he opened his eyes and gave her a drowsy, crooked smile. "All right?"

"Yes." Leia stroked a few of his sandy curls back from his forehead. "I'm all right. Go back to sleep."

He ignored her good advice, which given his track record wasn't a surprise. "Are you sure?"

"…you had to ask the tricky question, didn't you?"

Propping up on one elbow, he looked down at her with an indescribable expression on his face, equal parts devotion and worry. "I hope you're not—that this isn't something you'll regret."

Leia no longer tried to predict which choices she'd regret and which she wouldn't. Life had taught her that almost no one could ever tell. She weighed her confused thoughts carefully before saying, "I don't know how to feel. You and I—" With one hand she gestured at the narrow gap between their bodies. "—well, it wasn’t something I'd planned."

She tried to imagine explaining herself later, to Han or to some unseen questioner or to her own self only a few days ago, who would never have anticipated what had just happened: _We lost pilots yesterday, good people who gave their lives for the Resistance. I couldn't stop thinking about them long enough to rest, so I got up to make some tea. Ransolm was already in the mess, awake for the same reasons. He could tell it had shaken me badly, and he tried to comfort me. The only reason we went to my cabin was so we could talk without waking up anyone else on board. It tore me open—even after all these battles, all these years. Usually I have to bottle it up and keep going; it felt so good to lean on someone else, just for a while. When he kissed my forehead I thought he was only saying goodnight, and then—_

The rest couldn't be told with words. It was a blur of sensation and heat, groans and shudders. Leia was too old to deceive herself that she hadn't chosen to sleep with Ransolm Casterfo. But even if passion hadn't compelled her, she'd forgotten how damn _good_ it felt. How powerful. How vital.

"I hadn't planned this either." Ransolm glanced down as his free hand sought hers; he pressed her palm against his bare chest. "But I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it."

She wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh at him, slap him, or kiss him. The only other man who'd ever made her this mixed-up was Han. "Ransolm, have you not yet noticed that pretty much any pilot in the Resistance is yours for the taking?" Poe Dameron, in particular, went wide-eyed every time Ransolm walked by. "I'm an old lady. An old _married_ lady. You can do better."

He raised an eyebrow. "I think we've already established that you're not too old to have sex. Absolutely marvelous sex, in point of fact."

Ransolm wasn't wrong. Images from earlier in the night flashed through Leia's mind, nearly as intoxicating to remember as they had been to experience. It hadn't been that way for her in a long time. Oh, she and Han were good together, always had been, but they'd become so very familiar to each other. So settled. She'd forgotten how it felt to touch someone new, not to know how he'd kiss, to see him almost desperate for her, eager and panting. Newness sharpened desire, triggered pleasure. She'd rediscovered that tonight.

If she could trust her memory of the raw, ragged cry he'd muffled against her shoulder, their lovemaking had been just as good for Ransolm.

"As for 'doing better'—you are the most extraordinary person I've ever known. How could I help wanting to be closer to you?" Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her palm.

"You're as smooth as you ever were on the Senate floor," she said dryly, hoping her tone masked how moved she was. "But I didn't miss you skipping the most difficult part."

He sighed. "If Captain Solo hadn't been gone for so long, this would never have happened. You love him in a way you'll never love anyone else; that's not ever going to change. And when he returns, this has to be forgotten, completely. Those are the boundaries, yes? I've already accepted them."

Leia let her head fall back onto the pillow. "You're so certain Han will come back. More than I am."

"He will." Ransolm brushed two fingers along her cheek. "You're not an easy woman to walk away from."

She caught his wrist in her hand, intertwined their fingers. It hadn't escaped her notice that their touches were having a very different conversation than their words were, and yet both conversations were true. "You've been through a rough time. When you've been able to consider—to recover—things are going to look very different to you than they do tonight."

That bent the smile on his face and made his gaze go distant. Leia wondered whether she ought to have spoken those words, accurate though they were. Ransolm's recuperation from his long imprisonment was still very new. Riosan work camps were the same ones left over from the days of the Empire, and from what she understood, operated with much the same ruthlessness and cruelty. He'd been sent there to await trial for treason. Had the trial come to pass, he would certainly have been found guilty and swiftly executed. But Riosa had only recently reinstated the death penalty, which meant its legal system functioned more slowly than usual. Ransolm had spent nearly three years laboring under the most grueling and inhumane conditions, in the belief he had no future other than the executioner's block. When Leia had led the Resistance raid to save him, it had taken Ransolm long seconds to even recognize her. But for his prison IdentiBadge, she might not have known him either—bone-thin, filthy, and ragged where he had always before been polished and dapper. That evening, in sickbay, he'd sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, shaking and unable to speak. He hadn't stilled until she'd taken her place by his side and put one arm around his shoulder.

Leia had meant only to reassure him. But she now recognized that moment as one of the steps that had led them to this bed, this night.

"I suppose you mean I'm not entirely back to myself," he said. "No. I'm not. My old self would've been more cautious. I've learnt better. If you want something, you have to go after it. If you care for someone, you must tell them as soon as you can. That other, more 'suitable' time we all wait for—it may never come. We only have today."

"I know." She'd understood that, during the Rebellion. The decades in-between hadn't dulled her sharpness in any other way but that—lulling her into believing that tomorrow was a promise.

Two years ago, Ben, Han and Luke had proved to her, all over again, that it wasn't.

Ransolm shifted in bed, laying his head back onto his pillow and closing both hands around hers. "When I was in that camp, I had nothing to live for. Nothing to hope for. They hadn't executed me yet, but inside…it was as if I was already dead. You came to rescue me and I couldn't understand it, because I didn't know what was left of me to be saved. I was so grateful to be spared death, but I didn't—Leia, I didn't feel _alive_ again. Not until tonight. Not until I was touched and held by someone I loved, who loved me too."

"Ransolm—"

"I know this isn't really how you love me. I'm not sure it's how I really love you. But it's still love, isn't it?"

Leia nods. Tears prick at her eyes, but it's been a long time since she wept easily. She's lost her husband, her brother and her son. Ransolm can't replace any of them entirely; no one ever could. But her love for him includes shades of her love for all three. Lying here with him is probably as close as she'll ever be to any of them again.

Yet he is also himself to her, valuable and important and, yes, loved.

"Thank you," she says quietly. "You weren't the only one who needed to come back to life."

He kisses her fingertips, then shifts closer so that their faces are nearly touching. "Are you ever going to let me back into your bed, after this?"

"I don't know." It's not much of an answer, but the only honest one she can give.

"Then we'd better make the most of the evening, hadn't we?" Ransolm's lips brush her hairline as his hand curls along her waist.

She answers by kissing his mouth, long and deep. Tomorrow is never a promise. All they'll ever have is tonight.

 

 

FINIS


End file.
